Image capture devices such as digital cameras, desktop cameras attached to personal computers, and cameras built into mobile telephones, typically have a single lens through which light that is received from an object to be photographed. The light is typically directed from the single lens onto a charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor array, or alternatively, a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor array. Because most of these cameras are color cameras, a pixilated color filter is interposed between the lens and the sensor array. The color filter normally contains an array of red, green, and blue filter elements. Each element of the color filter, regardless of the color transmitted through the element, is aligned with a sensor element located in the sensor array. Such an alignment enables color pixel information to be captured in the sensor array. The color pixel information is then processed to generate a color image of the object.
The single-lens camera suffers from several handicaps, such as limited image resolution, poor color imaging, and improper luminance imaging. Typically, image resolution limitations are a result of using a single sensor array containing a limited number of sensor elements. Image resolution may be improved by increasing the number of sensor elements, and such a solution has been used in several cameras where the density of sensor elements contained in the sensor array has been increased. While more needs to be done in improving sensor element density even further, it is also desirable to find alternative solutions to improving imaging resolution.